Mr Finley's article is an elaborated version of a talk first broadcast in October 1963. It was offered for publication with the intention of stimulating discussion of a problem which has been exercising archaeologists and historians. For this reason its author does not here answer the provisional criticisms and comments offered by Professor Caskey, Mr Kirk and Professor Page which are also printed below. It is hoped that this presentation will help to define for readers the very varied issues which attend the problem of the date and nature of the Trojan War.

The fragment is written on the two sides of a leaf of a papyrus codex, dated by Roberts to the fourth century A.D. Our experience so far indicates that so late a manuscript would be likelier to contain Menander than any other author of this genre. Yet the first editor (p. 31) thought the piece ‘un-Menandrian’; and to Webster the ‘tone’ seemed more like that of Apollodorus of Carystus (see CR, I.c., 60). The re-examination of the text whose results are now offered was begun after it had been observed that certain passages which might have been thought to rule out Menander's authorship might have been wrongly read or wrongly understood. After it had been completed, Morel's article appeared, ascribing the piece ‘mit aller Entschiedenheit’ to Menander. We note with pleasure that at several points our findings concur with his, although we are unfortunately not able to pronounce a verdict with anything like his confidence.

There have been found in Samos boundary-stones, horoi, of the temene of Athena, Ἀθηνῶν μεδέονσα, and of the Eponymoi and Ion, both Ἀθήνηθεν. All come from the great plain of Khora which runs between Tigani, the ancient city, and the Heraion. On the ground of these inscriptions alone it has been suggested, and it is commonly believed, that Athens made her conquest of Samos in 439 the occasion for seizing all or part of the plain, and that a tithe of the land seized was assigned for the benefit of the three Athenian cults represented, the remainder being occupied by a party of cleruchs from Athens. The plain of Khora is both the largest and the richest in the whole island. No doubt it was the property of the aristocratic Geomoroi, descendants of the early settlers and presumably to be identified with the oligarchs who had revolted from Athens in 441/0. That their lands should have been forfeit upon their own flight into sanctuary at Anaia would not be surprising in the context of the harsh terms which Athens imposed. Moreover, we have an obvious parallel in the confiscation and division of Lesbian territory after the revolt of Mytilene in 427, and in the allotment of a tithe of the divided kleroi to the gods on that occasion (Thuc. iii 50). Epigraphical evidence for temene confirms that similar measures were taken when a cleruchy was sent to Chalkis in 446.

‘Thirdly we love-sick youths introduce also a cottabus to take its stand for you here in the gymnasium of Bromius, as a punch-ball. All you who are present entwine your fingers in the thongs of the cups (i.e. the cup-handles which serve as thongs); and (?) before fixing your eyes on it (the target), you should measure by pacing with your eyes the air high above the couch, and estimate the area over which the wine-drops are to extend.’

These lines are quoted by Athenaeus (668e) in his celebrated account of the Sicilian and Athenian after-dinner game of cottabus, a pastime which has long been a matter of academic controversy. In several points text and interpretation are not clear. In general, it is an elaborate jest in which a cottabus party is described in vocabulary appropriate to the gymnasium and its pursuits, the dining-room itself being called the γυμνάσιον Βρομίον.

Palladas' attitude to Christianity has been much discussed in recent years. It is not of purely academic interest whether he was a pagan or Christian, for Christianity did not remain ‘the beggars' religion’, and it is the conversion of just such a figure as Palladas, a schoolmaster steeped in the classics but scornful alike of the traditional gods and the Platonism that had taken their place for the intellectual pagan of his day, that marks a vital stage in the christianisation of the Roman Empire. For nowhere did the traces of paganism linger longer than in the University circles of Alexandria. However the arguments adduced by P. Waltz to show that it is ‘infiniment probable que Palladas était chrétien’ carry but little conviction, and it seems much more likely that Palladas was and remained a pagan. The following poem, though overlooked or misinterpreted in most recent discussions, can perhaps be made to cast a little more light on the matter:

φιλοχρίστῳ Planudes (Marcianus 481): φιλοχρήστῳ Lascaris (editio princeps, 1494), edd. plerique. ‘Here we are, Victories, the laughing maidens, bearing victories for the city that loves Christ (?). Men painted us who loved the city, carving the symbols that are proper for Victories.’

My purpose in this article is to call attention to the inconclusive nature of the evidence for the view that the proper accompaniment of early Greek elegiac poetry was the flute. The elegiac couplet has been aptly called ‘a variation upon the heroic hexameter in the direction of lyric poetry’. But how far did it go in this direction? In particular, did early elegiac poetry have a close connexion with music? A distinction is commonly drawn between poetry written κατὰ στίχον, for example the epic hexameter and the iambic trimeter, which was spoken or at most intoned, and poetry in lyric metres which was sung to musical accompaniment: to which group does elegiac poetry belong?

Passages in Plutarch and Pausanias and hints in the lexicographers and in the early elegists themselves have suggested to some scholars that there was a connexion between elegiac poetry and the flute.

In his discourse on the causes of the Peloponnesian War (Pericles 31–32), Plutarch devotes an inordinate time to what he calls ‘the worst charge [against Pericles], but that having the greatest number of supporters’. The elements of this charge may be outlined briefly:

1. Pheidias was indicted for embezzling the precious materials used in the construction of the great statue of Athena Parthenos. The informer was a certain Menon, a fellow workman, who was subsequently given immunity and tax-free status by a decree of the assembly proposed by Glycon.

2. At the same time, Pericles' consort Aspasia was indicted and his friend and teacher Anaxagoras was attacked indirectly through a law against religious nonconformity brought by Diopeithes.

3. While the people were still in this mood, Dracontides had a decree passed, requiring that Pericles' accounts be deposited with the council and that the dicasts try any resulting cases on the acropolis with ballots specially sanctified at the altar. This last clause was stricken from the bill by Hagnon, who specified that any resulting suits were to be tried by a jury of 1,500.

4. Because of all these attacks, Pericles resolved to start the war, using the Megarian decree as provocation.

Plutarch reports here the popular fancy—that Pericles started a foreign war to avoid domestic embarrassments. The development of this tradition is a well-known chapter in the history of Greek literature, but as it is fundamental to this discussion, a brief review is called for.

The archaic inscription from Samos recording a dedication to Hera by two Perinthians (SEG xii 391) is a most interesting document from many points of view. But in this paper I shall confine myself to a single topic, the crux of 11. 3–4.

Klaffenbach, the first editor, frankly admitted that he could not master the problems presented by the letters on the stone (3 f.) Ο.ΙΚΗΙΟΙ. He was naturally reluctant to postulate dittography. The text is short and well inscribed, but that is not all. For when one has assumed the engraver's error one is still left with a phrase qualifying the names of the two dedicators, οἰκήιοι Περίνθιοι, for which Klaffenbach could see no satisfactory explanation. He therefore inclined to the possibility that there is a word for some form of craftsman concealed in these letters, and the dedication is comparable to the tithe dedications by potters from the Athenian acropolis. The lack of any word for a craft at all similar to the letters on the stone gives this suggestion the appearance of a last resort.

Robert thought that dittography should be assumed and οἰκήιοι explained as referring to the relationship as kinsmen which existed between the two dedicators but which was not evident from their names and patronymics. This explanation did not convince Klaffenbach, nor is it supported by other examples. And, as Guarducci rightly objected, clearer ways of expressing their relationship, if this is what the dedicators intended, could surely have been found.

Numismatists necessarily deal in minute detail, often so minute that it passes unnoticed by those used to a larger scale; yet as much historical knowledge may depend on such minutiae as on the far larger details of sculpture or architecture. This difference of scale, however, is dangerous because it tends to increase the gulf between numismatists, who seem to be pursuing ever smaller details, and historians, who want to be told how coinage may affect the larger picture with which they are concerned. The following pages are an attempt to assemble and evaluate some of the very incomplete, but annually increasing, evidence, which bears on the function and use of coinage in the Greek world in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. The treatment will be divided into three sections:

1. Evidence for the movement of coins from their various areas of origin.

2. Evidence for the incidence of fractional coinage.

3. The implications of 1 and 2 for an understanding of the function of early Greek coinage.

In a previous article (JHS lxxxii (1962) 56 ff.) I examined some of the theories and explanations which appear in Greek philosophy and medicine in the period down to Aristotle, in which reference is made to right and left or certain other pairs of opposites (light and darkness, male and female, up and down, front and back), and I argued that several of these theories are influenced by the symbolic associations which these opposites possessed for the ancient Greeks. In the present paper I wish to consider the use of the two pairs of opposites which are most prominent of all in early Greek speculative thought, the hot and the cold, and the dry and the wet. My discussion is divided into two parts. In the first I shall examine the question of the origin of the use of these opposites in Greek philosophy. How far back can we trace their use in various fields of speculative thought, and what was the significance of their introduction into cosmology in particular? And then in the second part of my paper I shall consider to what extent theories based on these opposites may have been influenced by assumptions concerning the values of the opposed terms. Are these opposites, too, like right and left, or male and female, sometimes conceived as consisting of on the one hand a positive, or superior pole, and on the other a negative, or inferior one? How far do we find that arbitrary correlations were made between these and other pairs of terms, that is to say correlations that correspond to preconceived notions of value, rather than to any empirically verifiable data?

One of the more persistent and widespread minor traditions in ancient literature represents the Carians as the great military innovators and practitioners of early times. It is one of several ‘Carian’ traditions, in which this people is given a greater importance than it seems historically possible to allow, and which at one time led certain scholars to believe that the Aegean Bronze Age civilisation as a whole was Carian in origin. This particular example can be checked, up to a point, from the evidence of archaeological discoveries; and the experiment may prove worth making, both as a supplement to the archaeological record, and as a test case for the value and quality of such traditions. In its more extreme version, the Carians are credited with the actual invention of various military devices: this, as I hope to show, is unlikely to be true. But there is a milder form of the tradition, which states that the Carians habitually used these devices. This version may in part arise from the vaguer wording of certain ancient authorities, but as it stands it is quite acceptable.

I must begin with an explanation of my reasons for writing this paper. I have for some years been interested in modern attempts to reconstruct ancient campaigns and battles—especially those between Greece and Persia—in fact, most of the arguments I am using tonight were first written down in a rather different form in 1913. But I should not have thought it worth while to read them to this Society had not Admiral Custance's book, his lectures, his address to this Society and the discussion which followed it made me feel that this subject is still one of fairly general interest, that we are still far from arriving at certainty with regard to the history of ancient fights, and that it may be worth while to raise some general questions such as, ‘How far it really is possible to reconstruct ancient battles with any finality’ and ‘how far the methods of attempting to do so usually followed by modern writers really are the soundest methods to employ’.

Thucydides' digression (i 126–38) on the later careers of Pausanias and Themistokles is deservedly famous for the lucidity of its style and the interest of its subject matter, but the chronological difficulties of the apparently perspicuous narrative are notorious. A. W. Gomme singles out the date of Themistokles' flight to Asia Minor as the major difficulty of the first half of the Pentekontaetia, ‘a difficulty which, if it could be solved, would lead to the solution of most of the others’. He concludes his discussion by saying: ‘The question remains unsolved.’ However, some simple facts (for which Thucydides is himself the authority) about the number and ages of Pausanias' sons have a direct bearing on the time of Pausanias' death and so on the date of Themistokles' flight; curiously enough their importance has not been noticed.

After the deaths of his uncle Leonidas and his father Kleombrotos in 480, Pausanias became regent for his nephew Pleistarchos, the son of Leonidas and Gorgo, who died in 459/8 or 458/7 and before the battle of Tanagra. Pausanias' eldest son Pleistoanax then succeeded as the king of the Agiad royal house. Thucydides (i 107.2) says that he was still a minor and that his uncle Nikomedes, the younger brother of Pausanias, commanded for him at Tanagra in 458 or 457. Pleistoanax did, however, command the Peloponnesian forces which invaded Attica in 446, just after the revolt of Euboia (Thuc. i 114.2).

Pausanias began the ninth book of his Periegesis with a brief topographical observation on the contiguity of Boeotia and Attica and specifically of the Plataiis and Eleutherai, followed by two digressions, the first legendary and toponymic, the second historical; together they occupy the remainder of the first chapter. The only topographical facts to be gathered from these digressions are: (1) that there was a direct road from Thebes to Plataia, and (2) that there was a road from Thebes leading to Hysiai in the direction of Eleutherai and Attica (cf. Thuc. iii 24; Arrian, Anab. i 7), which gave indirect access to Plataia (ix 1.6). The topographical thread is resumed at ix 2.1: Hysiai with its unfinished temple of Apollo and oracular well, Erythrai, and—closer to Plataia—the so-called Tomb of Mardonios were all located to the right of the road from Eleutherai to Plataia.

This black-figure skyphos, ornamented with pleasing burlesque scenes, is now in a private collection in London. Although it came to light some time after the publication by Wolters and Bruns of Das Kabirenheiligtum bei Theben it has all the characteristics of a Kabirion vase. These vases have been securely classified by Wolters and Bruns and most of them are now to be seen in a recently opened gallery of the National Museum in Athens. The general form of the cup, the ear-shaped handles, the white ground and the black bands, the heavy frieze of grapes and the unmistakably anti-heroic style of the drawing, make it impossible to doubt that it comes from the workshop of the Kabiros Painter.

The subject-matter of Kabirion vases is often mysterious. With undoubted representations of Kabiros and of local gods and heroes, it includes many scenes of abandoned comedy which have defied modern solution. It has been suggested that many of the paintings may be related to sacred mysteries, and it is certainly true that they often allude to the cult of gods and heroes.

Professor C. A. Trypanis has kindly pointed out to me that in my article in JHS lxxxiii (1963) 75 f. I have confused two different inscriptions. The decree of the Aetolian League from Thermum recording a grant of proxeny Ποσειδίππῶι τῶι ἐπιγραμματοποιῶι Πελλαίωι and mentioned by me on p. 76 contains no mention of an Asclepiades. Both an Asclepiades and a Posidippus are mentioned in a mutilated Delphian psephisma of about 276–5 B.C. published in Fouilles de Delphes iii.3 (Epigraphie, 1943) no. 192, granting proxeny and other privileges to a number of persons of different nationalities.

This Delphian decree, and not, as I say on p. 87, that from Thermum, is the one which Professor Trypanis suggested might explain the reference in ll. 9–11 of the poem discussed in my article. Luckily this error makes not the slightest difference to my argument. In saying to Apollo, ‘If ever in time past you showed me favour’, Posidippus is almost certainly referring to his past poetry.

It is notorious that the Arabs knew almost nothing about Homer beyond that he was a poet. In a book entitled siwān al-hikma (the cupboard of wisdom) by Muhammad b. Tāhir b. Bahrām al-Sijāzi (†c. A.D. 980) a chapter is given up to him. It says that Aristotle relied on his poems continually and all praised him for his skill as a poet, his solid knowledge and excellent counsel. One Stephen (probably the son of Basil) translated some of his poems into Arabic. To the question, ‘Who is the greatest Greek poet?’, Diogenes replied, ‘Each one of them—in his own estimation; but most say Homer’. A brief dialogue is quoted:

Homer. I wonder that men, who can copy God, do not do so but copy animals.

JHS lxxxiii (1963) 115 n. 82 leaves reasonable cause for doubt about my views, even for those who noted that 1959 came after 1957. IG i2 772 is lost, but presumably the dedication was a fluted column with a tripod mounted on the capital. Consultation of Raubitschek, Dedications will show that no other inscription on a fluted column is known in Athens after 480. It will also show that no other Athenian fluted column had its inscription horizontally across the flutes; the 22 Akropolis pieces have vertical inscriptions. What the chronological implications of the abnormality are is anyone's guess. The eyewitnesses reported some alphas with sloping cross-bar and three-bar sigmas, which push the inscription up, and an isolated eta, which might be thought to bring it down (several cases 460–440, Raubitschek D 46, 135, 136, 166, 174; D 191 is earlier, though not perhaps as early as Raubitschek's 500). More serious is the spelling Σκελίο, with single lambda. The inscription has influenced editors into thinking the single lambda correct, but only one ms. of any author has it, G of Thucydides at viii 89.2. G, we can now see, is a recentior (cf. Dover, CR n.s. iv 76), and a study of Hude's apparatus shows that it is correcting the aberration Σικελίο.